Madame St. Auge smiled faintly. “Oh yes: your brother was here. Naturally! How could Ellen have gone away with him if he had not come here for her?”

“Gone away with him! In God’s name, where?”

“I cannot tell you.”

A thought struck me. Was Nathaniel to see her safe to Albany, since Mademoiselle de Sabrevois herself couldn’t go? Then, as Madame St. Auge did nothing but stare at me, I answered my own question. “No, he couldn’t do that! He’s on duty with the army! And he couldn’t take a girl like Ellen with the army! Do you know what this army is? It’s starving! It’s trying to save itself! There’s no discipline or order in it! It’s rotten with smallpox!”

“I’m very sorry,” Madame St. Auge said. She started to close the door in my face; but I prevented her by putting my foot upon the threshold.

“So am I sorry,” I told her harshly. “I intend to see Marie de Sabrevois.”

“I have told you she is in bed.”

“I don’t care where she is! I’ll see her!”

But the woman stood in my way, and I was unwilling to lay a hand on her.

“You should be the last to make a disturbance at this door!” she said. “It’s your brother’s affair; not yours. If he sees no harm in taking her with him, you should be content. If your brother takes away and hopes to protect a young girl to whom he is betrothed with the consent of her guardian, it is for you to show respect: not excitement and interference!”

“Betrothed? You’re telling me that Mademoiselle de Sabrevois wishes this young girl and my brother to be betrothed!”

“Why not? And why not? Why should they not be betrothed, and why should he not take her away to protect her?”

“I can’t talk to you,” I said. “You’ll have to let me see Mademoiselle de Sabrevois.”

“No, you can’t.”

I heard the thumping of a drum from across the river, and the sound of shouting. I was getting nowhere, and I felt I had to speak my mind. “Look here,” I said. “I doubt if you’ve told me the truth. What’s more, I doubt that Mademoiselle de Sabrevois is sick, and I’m going in to see her!”

Madame St. Auge spoke suddenly in French, raising her voice. A man came out of the room in which Nathaniel and I had first seen Ellen. He was a drab man in unnoticeable snuff-colored garments—the sort of person at whom one seldom looks twice. He might have been anything—a farmer: a small merchant: a servant; but I remembered seeing him before. He had been one of those waiting in Arnold’s headquarters on the afternoon when I had gone in with Steven Nason and Cap Huff to report to Arnold.